Joe Forster/STA
04-10-2010, 09:43
I have received complaints about the proliferation of posts "obviously" related to warez. "Obvious" was the favorite word of a forum member who left us some time ago and with whom I've had several quarrels about the exact meaning of the word. Unfortunately, in vain.
Please, understand that banning people on sight for uttering the word "Reloaded" and such would start a (righteous) rumor that moderators on FileForums have gone crazy and ban people without any apparent reason. Letting a few warez-related posts slip through moderation (false negatives) is still much better than ruining the forum's image with mindless banning (false positives). In the past, I explicitly stated this danger, many times, in many threads.
I'm constantly reporting these suspicious posts to the moderators - yes, you read that right! - but, it seems, the others (currently only TippeX and, rarely, Empire!) have no time to deal with them and I'm not sure enough about my suspicion either. Let me remind you about the New anti-warez forum rules? thread which ended with the result that authors of suspicious posts should not be banned on sight, although the group of voters was definitely not a representative sample - if for nothing else, because of their low number.
My recommendation is the following: whenever you run into a post that you find suspicious enough, please, report it; see the traffic sign, with an exclamation mark, at the right side of post headers - it costs only a few seconds of your time! If multiple long-time forum members report the same post and I also find it suspicious then its author will get punished for sure.
I'm also open to suggestions.
Please, understand that banning people on sight for uttering the word "Reloaded" and such would start a (righteous) rumor that moderators on FileForums have gone crazy and ban people without any apparent reason. Letting a few warez-related posts slip through moderation (false negatives) is still much better than ruining the forum's image with mindless banning (false positives). In the past, I explicitly stated this danger, many times, in many threads.
I'm constantly reporting these suspicious posts to the moderators - yes, you read that right! - but, it seems, the others (currently only TippeX and, rarely, Empire!) have no time to deal with them and I'm not sure enough about my suspicion either. Let me remind you about the New anti-warez forum rules? thread which ended with the result that authors of suspicious posts should not be banned on sight, although the group of voters was definitely not a representative sample - if for nothing else, because of their low number.
My recommendation is the following: whenever you run into a post that you find suspicious enough, please, report it; see the traffic sign, with an exclamation mark, at the right side of post headers - it costs only a few seconds of your time! If multiple long-time forum members report the same post and I also find it suspicious then its author will get punished for sure.
I'm also open to suggestions.